Question: This photo taken around the end of the 1800s looks a lot like the winter we have been experiencing. Do you know the location? Many of us pass it almost every day.
Last week’s answer: The smiling faces seen in last week’s photo were alumni from the Baldwinsville Academy Class of 1932. The occasion was the group’s 50th class reunion held in September 1982. They are, front row from left to right: Millard Blakeslee, Virginia VanWie Silfer, Elizabeth Walter, Wilner Clifford Haas, Arthur W. Davis, Jr., Margaret Orvis Allen, Helen Perkins Baker, Edward Stevenson, Jack Shea, Grace Pratt Potter and Adele Jones Reid.
In the back row are, left to right: Nile Stebbins, Charles DeLyne, James Reeves, Chester Kingsley, Wallace Smallwood, Frank Harrington, Arthur Albro, Laura Dickinson Woehr, Josephine Connell Hudson, Leona Madden Payne, Olive Hosmer Lynch, and Raymond Lynch.
Attendees came from four different states plus numerous communities throughout New York state. The event was organized by B’ville residents Millard Blakeslee, Josephine Connell Hudson, Raymond and Olive Hosmer Lynch, Nile Stebbins and Elizabeth Walter. Chester Kingsley emceed the luncheon.
Following a buffet luncheon and many miles down memory lane, the group held a photo session and then climbed aboard a school bus to tour the district and take in the many new schools that had been built since the grads had received their diplomas 50 years earlier. Their graduation in 1932 was the 63rd commencement in the academy’s history, and their class of 50 was one of the largest in the school’s history to that date.
Village Trustee Bruce Stebbins hazarded a guess at the photo—and almost got it: “Class of 1931 high school reunion? Front row on far left is Millard Blakeslee, behind him is my father, Nile Stebbins, three to his left is Chet Kingsley. Others I should know.”
Contact Editor Sarah Hall at [email protected] or leave a message at 434-8889 ext. 310 with your guess by 5 p.m. Friday (please leave the information in the message; we are not generally able to return calls regarding History Mystery responses). If you are the first person to correctly identify an element in the photo, your name and guess will appear in next week’s Messenger, along with another History Mystery feature. History Mystery is a joint project of the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse and the Baldwinsville Public Library.
